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This is the blog of self-taught painter Robert Conway. I see that this page is going to be a work in progress. I have been painting for eleven years now, even though I have a fine arts background in drawing, sculpture and silk screening I myself have never taken a painting course and now looking back I just like it that way I guess that is because I don’t have to follow any established rules or guidelines whatsoever. Painting is mostly a hobby for me at the moment, during the day I work in midtown Manhattan as a digital retoucher at McCann Erickson and at night and in the mornings I try to get a little time in for painting.

A lot of these writings are just some observations I have had on along the way to while trying to teach myself to paint, over the years there has been a lot of hits and misses with my acrylic paintings and I am just passing along some of the things that I have discovered along the way that may help you along with your artwork. This is all trial and error stuff, I used to be prone to making huge irreversible mistakes with my work, but now with a few years of practice under my belt I have learned to avoid a lot of the big blunders that used to have me swearing off painting. When I make a mistake now, it is usually just a minor, I‘ll fix it tomorrow, goodnight, kind of mistake. I have found out that the magnitude level of your mistakes decreases as you become more familiar with your craft.

Here are a few things I should mention before we get underway. I am referring to representational art, meaning you are basing your painting on something that you are observing and you want to emulate into your own artwork. Not so much realism, that is way too strict for yours truly, I never really tried it but it sounds like you have to adhere to a certain set of painstaking rules, and that will never do in this self-taught painting blog. This is more of a collection of approaches I use that help me finish an acrylic painting, which we all know is no easy deal, so much uncertainty sometimes, right? It is also a little handbook on the art of eluding frustration as you work on your paintings, I mean you have got to have a little fun sometimes. Creating a painting that you would be proud to hang in your living room takes an incredible amount of thought and concentration. You will probably never focus so deeply and for such long periods of time on one thing at any time in your life. Mentally it is an exhausting process, because there are so many things to consider and so many different directions to go. So sidestepping any unnecessary problems that are going to shift your focus is a key part to finishing a painting.